My Mythical Kids

Yesterday I cleaned the kitchen while listening to a couple of Susan Wise Bauer's convention talks. I love that I can do this. I have Well-Trained Mind and read it at least once a year, but there is just something about having the author talk about how she does things or exactly what she meant that really makes homeschooling this way seem possible. (Wow, now that's a run-on sentence.)

So yesterday I listened to her talks on using the Great Books to teach history and how to teach writing to middle graders. I listened and nodded and cleaned and thought, "wow, this makes so much sense. I'm going to make sure I start this with the kids tomorrow." It's not that we haven't been doing what she says, well, except for the whole middle-grader thing, since Harry is only in fourth grade, but it's always good to have a reminder or a kick in the pants. So that was yesterday.

This morning Harry read the last of The Impossible Journey and Sam read a couple chapters of Little House in the Highlands. Harry came back to the desk and told me a couple of things about the book, we talked a little and I was about to tell him to grab his science stuff and all of the sudden it occurred to me that this is when I ask him about who he identified with or some of the other questions from the talk. And then I panicked because I couldn't remember them. And I let the moment go by. I tried with Sam, but he just clammed up and wouldn't say anything, so that didn't work.

It was then that I realized. I want to do these things and I know they are important for the kids' educations, but rarely do I ever put them into practice in real life. But while I am listening to the talks or reading the books and blogs I ask the questions and do the memory work. I do all of these things though with my imaginary kids--the ones that pay attention all of the time, do their work without jumping up and down 500 times and don't eat all of the treats out of the pantry. Last night I could just picture the kids sitting down to discuss things and we had a fabulous night of serious intellectual pursuits. But then Emma threw up again and I was back into my real life with my fabulous but very real kids. And since I'm not going to trade them for the mythical ones, I need to come up with a plan to implement all of these wonderful ideas in the here and now.